During most deposition processes. it is necessary to hold the wafer firmly against a support surface. During a sputter deposition process, for example, the wafer is held to a pedestal of a heater unit which is located in a chamber filled with a noble gas or reactive gas up to a pressure in the millitorr range. Usually, a clamp ring is used for clamping the wafer to the support surface. The clamp ring has an inside diameter slightly smaller than the diameter of the wafer thus contacting the wafer all around its circumferential edge. Due to the large contact surface the edge exclusion, i.e., the wafer area where no sputter deposition takes place or sputter deposition is minimized, is in a considerable range thereby reducing the surface which can be used for good electrical dies. In addition, the wafer clamp is heated during the sputtering process due to ion bombardment from the plasma and a heat flux from the wafer clamp to the wafer takes place which makes the outer parts of the wafer overheated. The material deposited in this area loses its specified property and will decrease the number of good electrical dies per wafer. Another problem related to the clamp ring is that of clamp ring/wafer sticking. In the area of minimum distance to the wafer, the clamp ring may stick to the wafer due to the growing thickness of the sputtered material on the wafer clamp. One approach to minimize the possibility of sticking is to form a portion that overhangs the contact surface between the wafer and the clamp ring, thereby blocking sputtered material from being deposited in the area where the clamp makes contact with the wafer. However, the overhang portion does not completely eliminate the possibility of wafer sticking to the clamp ring.